


Five Times Natasha Suspected She Was Jewish

by AnnabelleVeal



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Antisemitism, Gen, Identity Issues, Jewish Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnabelleVeal/pseuds/AnnabelleVeal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And one time she knew for sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Natasha Suspected She Was Jewish

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [this](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/12672.html?thread=29594752#t29594752) prompt for Jewish!Natasha at the kinkmeme.

1.  
  
She is six and she finds a necklace wrapped in tissue paper and slipped snug into the back corner of a drawer. The pendant is a strange-looking star, with points that number the same as her years. She wears the necklace to school, tucked beneath her uniform and each point of the star biting into her skin like a secret. When she returns home the empty tissue paper lays open on the table before her tense and silent parents. It’s the first time she hears her father yell, her own fear reflected plainly in his eyes.

 

  
2.  
  
She is eight and she is sitting on a hard metal chair in a windowless room. Only her toes touch the ground, like a dancer _en pointe_. She moves through the positions – first, second, third, fourth, fifth. The ugly fat man from the government agency sits across from her and flicks ash from his cigar onto the floor between them. She watches the ash fall and she can see flames licking at baseboards, charred, peeling wallpaper. The man takes a long puff and exhales into her face.  
  
“I will only ask you once more, were your parents Zionists?”  
  
She breathes in. Smoke fills her lungs and she hears her mother’s screams. She breathes out. The cigar presses down onto her forearm and she bites her lip and blinks back tears. _Fifth, fourth, third, second, first_.

 

  
3.  
  
She is eleven and they are running hand-to-hand combat drills in pairs. Her opponent is an older boy called Zhenya, with closely shorn hair and a mean smile. He throws a sloppy punch and she dodges it with ease. She spins around and butts him in the chest, then takes advantage of his hunched position to bring him to the ground with a leaping kick to the head. He hits the mats with a grunt and she reaches to help him up. He spits on her hand.  
  
“Fucking _zhid_ ,” he says, and she knows hate when she hears it.

 

  
4.  
  
She is fourteen and she has just returned from a failed mission. The lost intel is nominal, but Red Room is not an organization that looks kindly upon mistakes. She sits in the archives, awaiting word of what the fallout will be and pretending that she isn’t hiding. This is her favorite place in the compound. She has spent countless hours here, teaching herself piecemeal history and politics from decades' worth of pages zebra-striped with redactions. The previous archivist was a bookish, soft-spoken man named Oleg who had taken a liking to her. He had a fondness for the arts, and he introduced her to a secret dusty collection of filmstrips containing operas, symphonies, _ballets._  
  
Oleg disappeared six months ago and was replaced without a word by a scowling young soldier, but the films remain. She turns to them now, soothing her nerves with grainy footage of Maya Plisetskaya dancing her famous Dying Swan. This is where her handler finds her. He unspools every film, tells her that they are dangerous, poisoning her mind with foolish dreams. He pulls a book of matches from his jacket pocket and strikes one. He holds it up between his thumb and forefinger and watches it burn for a moment before flicking it onto the coiled heap between them. The plastic crackles and twists as it melts. She must learn that she is nothing, he says, a tool to be used and discarded. And that if he had his way, filth like her, like Plisetskaya, would never again take the stage at the Bolshoi.  
  
Then he breaks all the toes on her right foot.

 

   
5.  
  
She is twenty and she is in a ramshackle house outside of Tiberias. It has taken her weeks to track the mark to this sleepy fishing village, but in the end she found him. In the end she always finds them. He kneels on the cracked vinyl of the kitchen floor (She grimaces when she sees the cracks. It will be hard to get the blood out). She presses the end of the silencer against the back of his head, and like so many of them, he begins to weep. Unlike any of them, he chokes out a tune through his tears: “ _Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai—_ ” She pulls the trigger.  
  
The man's final note hangs in the air, jarring and unresolved. It stirs something deep within her – an itch, a loose thread. It worries at the corners of her mind as she arranges the body, dances on the tip of her tongue while she searches through her bag for bleach. Finally, there rises from the farthest recesses of memory an echo, and she hums to herself the rest of his melody as she scrubs the floor clean.  


 

  
+1  
  
She is twenty-six and she is sitting on another metal chair, in another windowless room, with a man from a different government’s agency.  
  
He reads from a heavy manila folder. “Natasha Romanoff. AKA Natalia Alianova Romanova. AKA the Black Widow. Recruited by Red Room after being orphaned at age eight in a house fire. Originally from Volgograd, born to Jewish parents—"  
  
There’s only the slightest hitch before Natasha steadies her breathing. She’s very good at what she does.  
  
Apparently this Agent Coulson is very good, too. “You didn’t know?”  
  
She hadn’t, not for sure. There were moments, flashes, the mismatched puzzle pieces of memory that she had fitted together to form a vague shape of the thing, but the result was still only a fuzzy suspicion, nothing certain.  
  
And now this man is telling her something that should sound like a lie, like a power play to make her fold, and all she can hear is the truth.  
  
“ _You didn’t know?_ ” rings in her ears. It ought to be an accusation, except that he sounds curious, surprised maybe.  
  
“How did you?”  
  
“It’s my job,” he says, not unkindly.  
  
He closes the folder and fixes his eyes on her. His expression is inscrutable, but it seems to have softened a fraction. “Trust me when I tell you, Miss Romanoff, that your heritage is about the only information in that file I don’t find troubling. It’s clear to me that this was not the case with your former employer, but I can promise you that it won’t be a problem here.”  
  
Strangely enough, she believes him.  
  
“Now, let’s talk about the terms of your defection.”  
  
He continues speaking, this time about logistics like psychiatric evaluations and probationary periods, but she is lost in her own thoughts.  
  
 _Born to Jewish parents. Natasha Romanoff is a Jew. I am Jewish._  
  
She rolls it around her head, tests the shape and feel of the words, wraps this new identity around herself like a coat she is trying on for size. It’s baggy in places, with room to grow into, but it fits, she thinks.  
  
Defecting means survival, at least for the moment. But maybe it will go beyond that. These people, knowingly or not, have already given her a gift, a crucial last piece to her puzzle. Maybe here she can rebuild herself bit by bit until she is better, is _more_ , than she was allowed to be before. Maybe this place could become home.  
  
“So how does that sound?” Agent Coulson’s voice cuts through her reverie and she blinks, looks up to meet his expectant gaze.  
  
“I’m amenable,” she says.  
  
He cracks the barest hint of a smile and offers her his hand. “Welcome to SHIELD, Agent Romanoff. And—,” he glances at his watch, “—Shabbat shalom.”

**Author's Note:**

> Cultural/translation notes:
> 
> - _Zhid_ is a Russian pejorative for Jew.  
>  -Maya Plisetskaya is a famous Jewish ballerina from the Soviet era.  
> [ Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Luz5g-doa34) she is dancing her signature piece at age 61(!)  
> -In part 5, the man is reciting the Shema Yisrael. It's probably the most well-known Jewish prayer and is often the first one taught to children. It is also traditionally said as the last words by observant Jews.  
> - _Shabbat shalom_ is a greeting used on the Sabbath.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Five Times Natasha Suspected She Was Jewish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6321898) by [Chestnut_filly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_filly/pseuds/Chestnut_filly)




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